Japanese historians seek revision of U.S. textbook over ‘comfort women’ depiction

A group of 19 Japanese historians and scholars plan to file a protest with U.S. publisher McGraw-Hill, claiming a history textbook it published in 2011 contains a number of “factual errors” on the “comfort women” issue.

Comfort women is a euphemism used in Japan to refer to women and girls who were forced to work at wartime Japanese military brothels during the 1930s and 1940s.

The group, represented by historian Ikuhiko Hata, said the number of women cited in the book — 200,000 — is too large.

Hata, a professor emeritus at Nihon University and a noted expert on Japanese military history, estimates the number at about 20,000.

The group also said the textbook’s assertion that Japanese soldiers “massacred large numbers of comfort women to cover up the operation” is not supported by any historical evidence.

If Japanese soldiers massacred comfort women, the postwar Tokyo Tribunals or other war crime trials for officers of lower rank would have addressed such incidents, the group said, but there are no records of any such massacres.

The textbook, titled “Traditions & Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past,” was co-authored by historians Herbert Ziegler and Jerry Bentley.

“The sentences (on comfort women) are written in 26 lines. I’ve never seen such a short text that contains so many errors,” Hata said during a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Tokyo on Tuesday.

Hata told The Japan Times on Wednesday that the group will soon send a letter requesting “corrections” to McGraw-Hill.

The Foreign Ministry has already complained to the publisher over the textbook, although it has not made public what specifically it called “grave errors” on comfort women in the book.

The textbook states “the Japanese army forcibly recruited, conscripted and dragooned as many as two hundred thousand women age fourteen to twenty to serve in military brothels.” It also says a majority of the comfort women were Koreans and Chinese.

Hata said that of his estimate of 20,000, he believes Japanese accounted for about 8,000 and made up the largest segment, followed by Koreans at 4,000.

According to him, as of 1943 about 1 million Japanese soldiers were deployed overseas excluding Manchukuo, in present-day northeastern China, where Hata believes the army mainly used state-regulated private brothels instead of “comfort stations.”

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe continued to face the backlash from his cronyism scandals on Monday as opposition parties made more vocal demands at a special Diet session for key individuals — including...

If there had been 200,000 comfort women, and each serviced five soldiers a day — as was cited in one U.S. military document — Japanese soldiers would have spent so much time in the brothels that they would had little room to engage in combat or any other activity, Hata argued.

No records or other historical material have been found to show the number or nationalities of comfort women, although media reports have often quoted estimates of 100,000 to 200,000.

Yoshiaki Yoshimi, a leading historian on the topic, argues that there were at least 50,000 comfort women, assuming one female was allocated for every 100 troops.

The group of Japanese scholars also claimed the military did not directly recruit the comfort women, and that this was mainly done by private-sector brokers.

As far as the Korean Peninsula is concerned, mainstream historians, including Yoshimi, agree that it was private-sector brokers, not the Japanese government or military, that mainly recruited the women, as claimed by the group.

But in China, the Philippines and Indonesia, many women were forcibly taken by Japanese soldiers to military brothels and were forced to work there.

Today, the government argues such incidents were isolated crimes by individuals, not committed by the Japanese military or the government because these actions were not based on any orders.

Meanwhile, left-leaning historians say that the victims in China and Southeast Asia were also “forcibly recruited” by the Japanese military.

The comfort women issue has long been a thorny topic between South Korea and Japan, and continues to draw emotional reactions from various quarters.

After the Foreign Ministry complained to McGraw-Hill, 19 U.S.-based historians slammed the ministry and supported the authors for refusing to revise their descriptions.

“We support the publisher and agree with author Herbert Ziegler (who wrote the comfort women section) that no government should have the right to censor history,” the group wrote in February in a letter to the editor in the March edition of the scholarly journal Perspectives on History.

Yoshimi believes about half of the comfort women were Korean, citing one Imperial army document on sexually transmitted diseases among Japanese soldiers in China up to 1940, which breaks down the females who infected them according to their nationality.

The document states that Koreans accounted for 51.8 percent, Chinese 36 percent and Japanese 12.2 percent. Yoshimi believes most of them were comfort women.

Seems their efforts would be better spent ensuring that their own government is even bothering to select textbooks that include appropriate mention and explanation of the Nanking massacre and sexual slavery systems at all rather than going after a foreign publisher over what, as far as I can tell, can only be a matter of pride given that they’re just splitting hairs over numbers.

Sadly it’s all very typical – they perceive Japan as being attacked by outside forces and thus rally to defend Japan’s honor, but either don’t want to shatter the illusion that exists within Japan that Japan was a victim rather than a belligerent in the war, or just refuse or can’t be bothered to turn those same sights that they’ve set on McGraw Hill inwards and do serious self criticism of their domestic education system and its myriad deep flaws when it comes to World War 2 education. Either way you cut it, it’s not pretty, and a sad state of affairs.

Steve Jackman

As was reported in The Japan Times just a couple of weeks ago, this all started when the Japanese government bureaucrats (Japanese officials from one of its Consulates in the U.S.) paid an uninvited visit to Professor Ziegler’s office in Hawaii (he is one of the co-authors of the history textbook referenced in this article). The Japanese officials tried to intimidate and coerce Ziegler into retracting the two paragraphs in the textbook about comfort women. Since he and the publisher McGraw Hill refused to be pressured by the Japanese government, it seems the government has now changed its tactics by enlisting these guys in its efforts to white wash and rewrite history.

These 19 “academics” and “scholars” are just toeing the Japanese government line, so they seem to have no integrity or independence. This inappropriate meddling of the Japanese government into the contents of a textbook which is used for teaching students in a foreign country, i.e., the U.S., needs to stop. It is entirely wrong for the Japanese government to interfere in such an arrogant and forceful manner into the specific content of the material taught to students in a foreign country. Japan may be successful in using intimidation, fear, coercion and bullying to supress truth and promote self-censorship at home, but I am furious when it tries to use the same strong-arm tactics in my home country of America.

Testerty

This is the difference between Japanese and German….

Liars N. Fools

I think the Prentice Hall textbook should be revised. There should be a new line that says “The spectacular transformation of imperialist Japan into a peaceful, prosperous, democratic nation in the latter half of the twentieth century was somewhat marred by right wing leaders in the early twenty-first century who wanted to ‘restore the honor’ of the militarists who ruled Japan in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.'”

R0ninX3ph

Should we be surprised at Abe and his wanting to “restore the honor” of the militarists? His Grandfather was one of them, and his father took over his Grandfathers seat in the Diet.

The “dishonor” of the militarists makes Abe feel sad. So of course he has to rewrite history to make himself feel good.

Jamie Bakeridge

So sad that the Japanese have gone down this road. The Germans have made such impressive steps in addressing war crimes in comparison. This is devastating Japan’s image internationally.

timefox

It’s natural to criticize an unenlightened American.

The American government is talking about them as a professional camp follower or prostitute, not a sexual slave.

R0ninX3ph

Oh timefox…. I was hoping you’d be here. Oh… What am I saying, I knew you would be here. You saw the words “Comfort Women” and you just had to come in and bleat your little right wing sheep mantra.

I have said this before, and I will keep saying it again, it doesn’t matter if they were prostitutes or if they were forced. Prostitutes, even when paid, are still often sexual slaves. They are not able to freely leave the “employ” of their masters.

This is a problem nowadays with prostitution, and you can bet your bottom dollar that it was definitely a problem during the war under their military masters. Whether they were paid or not, does not matter! These women would not have been allowed to just say “Alright boss. I am finished, I am going back to my home”.

I mean, I’m not surprised that right wing Japanese thinkers don’t really care about this point though. Women in Japan, even now, are often treated terribly in regards to sexual harassment and workplace harassment, so why would timefox care about what happened to women over 70 years ago?

151E

Unfortunately, no side in this contest of pedantry will ever be able to prove specifics as to numbers and nationalities since, at the close of the war, the Japanese Army, Navy, and Imperial Household Ministry, all ordered any sensitive documents to be burned. Now why would they have done that?

Franklin124

Hey Japanese scholars…thanks for alerting me about the existance of this book. I will be sure to use it in all my classes from this point on.

batbrewer

From the Wikipedia page on Hata:

“Historian Chunghee Sarah Soh notes that Hata had put the total number of comfort women at 90,000 in 1993 but he later revised the number downward because of “his political alignment with the conservative anti-redress camp in Japan that emerged in the latter half of the 1990s”.[43]
[…]
Hata, who supports the retraction of the Kono Statement on comfort women, was the only historian appointed to the committee established by the government of Shinzo Abe to “re-examine” the statement.[51]”

Steve Jackman

“The group of Japanese scholars also claimed the military did not directly recruit the comfort women, and that this was mainly done by private-sector brokers.”

It makes no difference if a person in Japanese military uniform directly recruited these poor women or the military hid behind a third party such as private-sector brokers to give itself plausible deniability. The end result is the same and cowardly hiding behind a third-party does not absolve the Japanese military of such crimes.

In fact, anyone who knows how things operate in Japan knows that the Japanese authorities (government, corporations, judiciary, etc.) often hide behind private third parties to get their dirty deeds accomplished, so they always have plausible deniability. This is also why the Japanese authorities give their tacit approval to the Yakuza and its network, since they use the criminal organizations’ services to commit their own illegal acts.

MTC

Those who want to bash the Japanese people will keep doing so whatever counter-arguments these academics present. Just like those who want to bash the Chinese people will just keep doing so. Or just like those who want to bash Muslims will just keep doing so. Or just like those who want to bash the Israelis.. Hate, is the keyword here. “I care for human rights of…” is very often merely a pretense.

R0ninX3ph

So, anyone who thinks all countries should stop trying to whitewash their history is just bashing whatever country they are talking about? That’s just asinine.

MTC

Sadly, every countries in the world has so many closets filled with tons of skeletons. Before blaming others as “whitewashing history” we must clean up ours but it’s in fact impossible. Germany should be probably the only example of “nearly” accomplishing it, but these days Greeks began to accuse Germany as “NeoNazis who haven’t compensated”. So even Germany is not perfect. Let alone others. Then, why don’t we just let it go? Elsa in “Frozen” sings..”Let it go…”

R0ninX3ph

It can definitely be let go, when revisionism stops. As long as there are people that try to rewrite history, then it wont stop. Its a two way street mate, its a two way street.

Steve Jackman

So, by your logic, those who opposed Hitler and the Nazis were just bashing Germany? Those who opposed the Fascists like Franco and Mussolini were bashing Spain and Italy? Those who opposed the attrocities committed by Stalin were just bashing Russians? Those who opposed appartheid were bashing all South Africans? You better read up on world history before making such comments and calling them haters.

MTC

So who wrote this above? “In fact, anyone who knows how things operate in Japan knows that the Japanese authorities (government, corporations, judiciary, etc.) often hide behind private third parties to get their dirty deeds accomplished” Just replace “Japanese” with “Jews” or “commies” or whatever. This is a typical logic of haters who indulge in conspirary theory of any kind. It’s _THE_ tactics by Hitler and the Nazis, Stalin, McCarthy..What a shame.

chosonnom

I don’t see anyone bashing on Japan here. However, Japan remaking and restating facts that keep changing from their own mouths seem to be self damaging on Japanese image as a nation.

When there are facts that imply forced recruit of women, Japanese gov says its isolated case.

Then when other parties involved estimate victims of much higher number, Japanese so called historians reduce the number gradually as time passes.

Then u have Japnese leaders who apologize then says later it didn’t happen, then apologize again. Why don’t Japan itself get their acts together and stick with one story. Back in 1993, Japanese leader said comfort women was forced by gov, and was responsible. Now Japnese leader say its not. Noone is forcing you to apologize.

The same issue exists with POW treatment. Going by facts, POWs of Japan had low survival rate. Movie unbroken was also criticized by Japan saying its a lie. So who is lying here?

Japan or the rest of the world?

johnniewhite

So Professor Yoshimi is the most reliable scholar on this topic? It is true that his views represent that of Japanese left-wing activists, and that the 19/20 American history professors as well as the governments of Korea and China support them. But that is nothing to do with the credibility of his views. Professor Hata is a more highly regarded scholar as historian than Prof. Yoshimi.

R0ninX3ph

I will copy and paste what I said to timefox earlier, because it obviously doesn’t seem to sink in. Even Professor Hata says there were 20,000 comfort women.

“I have said this before, and I will keep saying it again, it doesn’t matter if they were prostitutes or if they were forced. Prostitutes, even when paid, are still often sexual slaves. They are not able to freely leave the “employ” of their masters.

This is a problem nowadays with prostitution, and you can bet your bottom dollar that it was definitely a problem during the war under their military masters. Whether they were paid or not, does not matter! These women would not have been allowed to just say “Alright boss. I am finished, I am going back to my home”.

I mean, I’m not surprised that right wing Japanese thinkers don’t really care about this point though. Women in Japan, even now, are often treated terribly in regards to sexual harassment and workplace harassment, so why would timefox care about what happened to women over 70 years ago?”

Replace “timefox” with “johnniewhite” and it still is the same right wing sheep bleating mantra. Even if the majority of the women were “Japanese” and the majority were “legitimate prostitutes” it doesn’t make it not sexual slavery…….. If the women aren’t free to leave, it doesn’t matter.